Box of Chocolates, St. Edward’s University’s improv club, hosted their first meeting of the semester on Wednesday, Sept. 15. The group, headed by president Andrew Mueller and senior advisor Brynja Newman, met outside on the Ragsdale Lawn for the first time in a year since they were limited by the pandemic. 

“Last year we weren’t able to be on campus. We had one online meeting and that was really it, it just kind of fell off because it’s hard to do an improv club online,” Mueller said. “Now we’re back and we’re just trying to have improv again, so we’re doing it outside to hopefully get to be closer to one another and not have to worry as much about the spread of germs.” 

The club aims to exercise their creativity and reaction skills through the art of improvisation, or fully unscripted and unplanned acting. Members are encouraged to react to imaginary scenarios pitched to them with quick and unfiltered responses as a way to build experience in brainstorming.  

The group spent their meeting playing improv games such as “Catch the Ball,” in which they stood in a circle and threw an imaginary ball to another player. They also played “Freeze,” a game where two players enacted a scene and were told to freeze and switch out with another player. 

Though improv is a traditional theater art, the club encourages students from all majors and backgrounds to get involved.   

“Improv is great for even non-theater majors because it teaches thinking on your feet, it makes you trust yourself and what comes to your mind immediately and not judge yourself before you speak,” Mueller said. “I think it’s beneficial [both] for a theater artist because it makes you better on the stage — things go wrong all the time in theater so being able to think quickly and fix it is one thing — but also a communication major could use it because they give speeches all the time and speeches never go exactly how you rehearse them.” 

Gwendalyn Waggoner, an English literature major, was attracted to the club for similar reasons. Waggoner said she came to the meeting looking for friends and fun and saw the games as something to bond over and learn from. 

“I spent the summer at a summer camp for kids with autism, and I taught drama lessons to them, so we played improv,” Waggoner said. “For working with special needs, it’s really important to work on social skills, and so using games like this can influence daily conversation.” 

Box of Chocolates will continue to host meetings throughout the semester, and they will be holding their annual Christmas show later in the school year according to COVID-19 guidelines.